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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28127580">Revelations</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/pseuds/Alley_Skywalker'>Alley_Skywalker</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, F/F, Feelings Realization, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:54:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,738</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28127580</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/pseuds/Alley_Skywalker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary spends a lot of her childhood in her own head. As an adult, she's forced to face some things about herself that she had been too scared to admit before.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Marya "Mary" Nikolaevna Bolkonskaya/Natalya "Natasha" Ilyinichna Rostova (one-sided), Marya "Mary" Nikolaevna Bolkonskaya/Sofia "Sonya" Alexandrovna Rostova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Revelations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/HATECADILLAC/gifts">HATECADILLAC</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mary remembers her childhood in flashes, almost as though it was a dream. She isn’t certain why she hasn’t been able to hold on to so many memories the way other children do – not that she can truly speak to what other people do or don’t, given how few friends she has and how isolated her life is. But Andrei remembers things that she has somehow forgotten. She doesn’t know if that’s because he was older when they happened, or because her mind has taken shelter against some of the small tragedies that had befallen their childhood.</p><p>Her father is not an easy man. He is willful and opinionated. He holds himself and others to impossible standards. And these days, he’s old and the weakness and loneliness his age saddles him with drives him to distraction. He was never a man to deal easily with things not going his way, but now the caprices of old age make him even more irritable. It does not help that he is all alone, with most of his old friends dead and no one to gather at his long table or parade through the halls of Bald Hills. His glory days at Empress Catherine’s court are long over. They were over the moment Pavel Petrovich took the throne, and Emperor Alexander has not seen fit to show <i>too</i> much love and grace to most of his grandmother’s closest allies, not with the guilt that still eats at him for his role in what happened to his father. </p><p>But that isn’t half of it. Old Prince Bolkonsky would not do well at court these days, no more than the men who had served Peter III and were brought back by Paul on his ascension were able to fit in in their old age, with their out-of-fashion clothes, wigs and mannerisms. Even with old age addling his mind, he knows it, and so resigns to his solitude with a bitterness that takes an outlet where it can. </p><p>Usually that outlet is Mary. Devoted and patient, she can see her father’s pain and can deal with it far better than Andrei, who has better, grander things to do than nurse an old man. She does not begrudge him that, as it is a man’s job to honor his father through service. But sometimes she also wonders if things had always been like this, if that is why there are fragments missing from her childhood, things she has made herself forget so that there was at least one time in her life when her family wasn’t missing pieces. </p><p>She does not remember her mother, Although Andrei says he does. Barely, in small flashes of memory from his boyhood, but he can recall her smile and her voice and the smell of her hair. Mary does not have such pleasures. She remembers her old nurse – that was the mother she knew. Deep down she realizes this is neither absurd nor abnormal for a girl of her station. Noble mothers rarely nurse and even more rarely do they play with their small children or care for them in the intimate manner nurses do. The relationships of mothers and daughters of their class are tragically distant. Not all of them, not always, but often enough. And Mary cannot know what her mother would have been like. But still it feels like a gap that should have been filled. </p><p>What she remembers is Andrei standing by the window, eleven years old, with his back straight as a rod, his eyes fixedly staring into the middle-distance, telling her, “Father is upset again.” She had asked if it was because of his lessons and he pressed his mouth into a tight line and said, “I did my lessons, but Father and I have some disagreements as to the meaning and place of the histories and certain figures therein. You’re too young to understand, Masha.” But she was old enough to <i>see </i>and to <i>feel</i>. It distressed Andrei to be at odds with their father, but in a different way than it distressed her. The distress she felt was closer to awe and fear, these days tinged with a guilty hurt she doesn’t consider herself deserving of. Andrei’s distress had always bordered more on anger, frustration, sometimes, she fears, contempt. </p><p>What she remembers is Andrei fidgeting at church as a boy, giving her a piggy-back ride to the lake, the concentrated expression on his face when he maneuvered his toy soldiers around a hand-drawn map. Sometimes he tried to explain his strategy games to her, but she could rarely parse them. Mostly because the logic of war never sat very well with her. It still doesn’t, even though she considers herself patriotic. What she doesn’t remember is him having many friends. It wasn’t until he joined the army and moved to Petersburg that she began to see the names of other young men flash by in his letters. Sometimes, when Prince Bolkonsky hosted a friend or two, they brought their sons and Andrei played with them well enough, but somehow almost none of those friendships stuck. </p><p>What she remembers is praying, long and hard, to fulfill God’s plan for her, to fulfil her duty to her father and her brother and her deceased mother. She prays for the same things now, but feels more hopelessness than she did then. As a girl, her dreams had been airy, sweet things, with enough hope to guide her through the night. She remembers sitting on the windowsill during stormy nights and wondering about her future and imagining that the angels would come down one day and take her away to her new, adult, life. There would be a quiet house in the country, much smaller and simpler than Bald Hills, but also more inviting. There would be her spouse and her children and Andrey would come when he was on leave and play with the children. She realizes now that her father was never a part of those dreams – somehow she had not noticed back then, so distracted she was by the dream itself. </p><p>Nor could she ever quite make out the face of her spouse. She never thought <i>husband </i>back then, somehow, and never imagined his face. In fact, he was barely a man at all, more an idea, full of light and love. If she tries to remember hard enough, she thinks her spouse smelled of field flowers and vanilla, smells far too feminine to be anything but a young girl’s delusion. Nor did she ever ask herself back then how any of these daydreams fulfilled her duties – though she supposed they must since all girls must marry and have children. The bible tells her the same. </p><p>Part of her knows why her childhood is fragmented – she spent too much time in her own head. </p><p>And part of her knows why she never dreamed of a <i>husband </i>and why she could never imagine his face or acknowledge why he seemed to glide through the air or smell like a young woman, or sometime appear to her for just a second in flower bracelets and muslin dresses. Some deep part of her always knew what the true picture looked like. </p><p>But Mary can never drag it out of herself even as an adult. Not until Natasha Rostova walks through the door one day and pulls back the curtain. </p><p>And Mary hates her for it at first. For forcing her to recognize that part of herself with the carelessness of a girl who has always had everything, had always been sure. She sees the face of a dream in her brother’s beloved, and realizes she is once again second in line to Andrei. She doesn’t resent <i>him </i>for it. He is older and her brother and her father has always told her just that – the honor of the family is Andrei’s to uphold, and the glory is his to have. The happiness too, it seems. But Mary loves him, so she stands aside. </p><p>But the girl is easy to hate just as she is easy to love. And Mary lets herself have this one small malicious thing. She feels guilty after, of course, when Natasha storms off with tears in her eyes. She’s such a small, delicate things. A dove, a small bird facing her first winter. Mary doesn’t want to be that to her, even if she can’t quite help herself. </p><p><i>I could not help loving you, </i>she writes, her hands shaking. It’s a confession. It’s the truth. </p><p>It hurts coming out of her own head like this, and she prays to try to go back in, to forget. Her father’s eyes are like daggers against her back and she wonders if he knows. If he has always known somehow, even when she didn’t. <i>You will never leave my side, I know, </i>he had once told her. She’s starting to think he’s right. </p><p>It hurts, but it’s a little easier to breathe too. A little easier to know what some of those things inside her are, the ones begging to get out and not finding an outlet. </p><p>And the second time she feels like that, standing in church beside a petite redhead who looks vaguely familiar, she allows the wave of feeling to wash over her. By then, Natasha and her visage are far away, tarred and torn a little by her attempted elopement with Prince Kuragin, but a memory that still burns in Mary’s chest. “You come here often these day, although I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” Mary says to the redhead girl one day when they are alone after a service. </p><p>The girl flushes. “I’ve had a lot to think about. And my cousin has been ill. I’ve been praying for her.”</p><p>Mary nods, sympathetic. “I’m Mary,” she says. <i>Princess Bolkonskaya, </i>she almost adds, but doesn’t, not wanting her father’s reputation to get in the middle of this – whatever it is. </p><p>The girl smiles – her eyes are soft, radiant. “Sofia. Sonya, if you’d like.” </p><p>“I’m very pleased to have a companion to pray with,” Mary offers, reaching out a hand, palm up.</p><p>Sonya puts a candle in her hand, their fingers brushing just slightly, sending a tingling sensation down Mary’s back that she now recognizes for what it is. <i>Accepts </i>for what it is. “I’m glad,” Sonya says and smiles again.  </p><p>And Mary finds that she is very glad too.</p>
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